Rother & Hastings

Hastings may seem to most people to be thoroughly urban, but it is blessed with countryside for almost 180 degrees around its boundary, the remainder being sea! The problem is that the surrounding countryside is under serious threat at the moment.

Rother Council planners are trying to respond to the pressures brought about by the Government’s new planning regime (NPPF 2018) by speeding up the process of their Development and Site Allocation Plan (DaSA).

The Campaign to Protect Rural England is pleased to see at last the Government's commitment to improving the environment shown in the 25-year plan launched last week, but we need actions, not simply warm words to ensure the Government provides the means to ensure we use resources wisely, from plastics to land.

Rother suffers as a planning authority from a permanent malaise – that of being always behind the curve. Yes, it produced a core strategy back in 2014 with what is for the South East a relatively modest housing requirement, but according to the latest planning agendas is down to providing only a 3.1 year housing supply. I do not really want to blame the Council because it is house builders who are not building out permissions granted, but the recent reaction to this supposed crisis is for Rother planners to recommend granting any application that comes in the High Weald AONB, no matter that most of the sites up for approval were categorised by the self-same Rother officers three years ago in their SHLAA as red (i.e. not suitable for whatever reasons to be developed) sites.

It is not just the big development plans in our countryside that CPRE care passionately about: Stephen Hardy of Rother CPRE has campaigned against new individual proposals in Winchelsea Beach, a haven immediately next to Rye Harbour Nature Reserve.

Rother DC is one of those relatively rare councils with an up to date Core Strategy. That said, since the Strategy was adopted in September 2014, there has been little activity in producing the Site Allocation Document. We wonder whether local elections in May 2015 played a part in this. To avoid the planning lacuna, now four parishes have been progressing their own Neighbourhood Plan proposals; Rother’s attitude was initially very lukewarm and very few resources are being offered by the Planning Department.